Movie Review: Roadside Romeo

The good news - Roadside Romeo is visually stunning for an Indian animation movie. The bad news - the screenplay is too weak to keep older blokes glued to their seats.

But hey, Roadside Romeo is made for kids, so lets not have the comparison. The plot resembles a recently released Hollywood film, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, where a rich dawg with all the comforts and food gets suddenly lost in the big bad world.

But lets talk more about the animation, agreed that Roadside Romeo looks nowhere as good as Pixar films like Finding Nemo, Ratatouille or the recently released Wall E. But since Romeo has Disney's money, since I am greedy and since I love animated films, I wanted to watch some spectacular animation. That's not to say that it was bad, in fact the main characers had a lot of detail including the fur and the eyes. The backgrounds were well lit and the entire milieu brought out the nod really well. The characters' mouths may flap up and down a lot but their expressive eyes make up for that.

The storyline is exactly what you'd expect from a Yash Raj banner. The predictable love story, the DDLJ spoof and other nudges towards earlier Yash Raj films. Director Jugal Hansraj makes a nice debut behind the camera, but he could've used a better script to pull in older audience.

The voices are provided by the absolute A list of Bollywood. Saif Ali Khan is great as the protagonist. It is obvious that Saif's voice is his weakest link as an actor but he really pulls of a convincing character. Kareena Kapoor is sadly not recognizable and she was more or less roped in because Saif was the hero.

Jaaved Jaffery is outstanding as usual as the villainous Charlie Anna. His Shatrughan Sinha mimic is downright hilarious. Sanjay Mishra as the sidekick Chainu is brilliant. Full marks to him.

Roadside Romeo is a total Bollywood masala flick and kids might just love it. But the issue is that is it really necessary for an Indian animated film to hint towards older Bollywood movies and actors for entertainment? I am still waiting for a movie like Ratatouille, with no recognizable cast, but with a splendid screenplay and animation.